


Buried Alive

by avoidfilledwithcelluloid



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, M/M, Underground Bunker, VHS Tapes because I'm a Nineties kid, implied off-screen death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-23 16:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19705540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avoidfilledwithcelluloid/pseuds/avoidfilledwithcelluloid
Summary: "His favorite room is the greenhouse; with the vegetation labeled by small markers written in L’s cramped kanji; the fresh misted scent of fertilizer and recycled water; and clear glass panels build a perfect view into the desecrated world above ground."(a post-apocalypse AU where L is subtly implied to be a doomsday prepper, Light does small gardening+cooking, and they watch a VHS of Murder She Wrote.)





	Buried Alive

**Author's Note:**

> just a little flash fiction style fic for y'all from a tumblr prompt meme: "buried alive." my inspo came from both 10 cloverfield lane bc of course but also brigsby bear, which is such a good movie that so few peeps hv seen. watch it if u get a chance! anyway! enjoy the fic and if you came from tumblr, i hope you liked the moodboard bc i literally just learned how to do overlays lol.

His favorite room is the greenhouse; with the vegetation labeled by small markers written in L’s cramped kanji; the fresh misted scent of fertilizer and recycled water; and clear glass panels build a perfect view into the desecrated world above ground. Light pulls two daikon from dark soil, sees a skull roll beyond the glass—pushed by wind he hasn’t felt in two long years. Before he can miss outside air, his radio buzzes on his belt. Each buzz vibrates on his hip and the radio signal light blinks red.

“Hello,” he answers, pressing down the response switch. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” L says. “You’re taking too long. Did you see something?”

Light rolls his eyes toward the skull, which—hollow—stares back. “No,” he says. “Just bones.”

“How are the strawberries?” Static blurs around L’s voice. His tone is soft, asking a question within a question: _How are you?_ “I tried a new compound with their fertilizer, since they came out too small last time.”

“They’re fine, but still growing.” Daikon in his hand dripping onto the rubber floor covers, Light checks on the strawberries and thumbs over them, green with youth. “Not there yet.”

He shuts off the radio after L asks him to hurry up. With the hand not holding vegetables, he hefts up a hatch from the floor to reveal a set of thin stairs down a ribbed metal tube. Tucking the daikon into the fanny pack wrapped across his torso, Light starts down the stairs and stops midway. His hand on the hatch, he looks once more at the curved terrarium ceiling, at the sky sealed off from his skin by glass. Today is a brown sky day but the sunset still glimmers behind dull clouds.

Light closes the hatch slowly and buries himself, L, and the daikon, back in cool underground safety.

For dinner, he makes his mom’s recipe for winter hot pot. L cuts the daikon in slim circles, chops up the protein substitute (woven from strains of soy and something just salty enough to remind Light of meat), and hands Light whatever else he asks for. If he knew the way to get L to be quiet and helpful was to force him in a kitchen, Light would have cooked during the investigation. But, then, if he knew anything of what he knew now, maybe there wouldn’t have been an investigation at all. After all, if one knew about the world ending, what does anything matter besides survival?

They eat on a lumpy couch in the recreation room, which L calls the den and Light calls the living room. Singe marks give the couch a few uncomfortable spots, and it sinks in the middle so no matter how far they sit apart, the mutant furniture slides them thigh-to-thigh by the meal’s end. Light doesn’t mind having L pressed to his side, although he doesn’t speak up. L tells him the couch was a gift from an assassin, whose house blew up and let L scavenge some of the burnt remains. The story is short, like most of his stories, and says what he said after the first wave of destruction, when he took Light’s hand to lead him away from broken bodies, broken buildings: L didn’t leave anything to chance. He built the bunker and he built for a long time.

Light wonders what it was like to live with the end of the world in his mind, but his thoughts fidget toward L’s hand, warmed by his dinner bowl, shaking his knee.

“Want to watch a tape?” He sets his bowl onto the coffee table—not burnt, but scratched by a thrift store lifetime—and picks up the remote. “Which one do you think we’re in the mood for?”

Light chooses a _Murder She Wrote_ double-episode tape from the towers next to the old television. Some have their original cases, some are taped over TV movies with their titles written in L’s lazier English. The tape pops as it starts to run and Light drops back on the couch, ready for a mystery.

When he sops up his last daikon slice, his bowl clatters into L’s and they sit together, smashed by the couch into one unit of sleepy but stiff contact. On screen, an old woman stirs her earl grey into a storm of milk and sugar. Pink tongue quick over their dry thin exterior, L licks his lips with each spoon stir.

“I miss tea,” he says.

“We still have tea,” Light says. “You miss sugar in your tea.”

L sighs and nods. His head is loose, chin tucked on his chest and hair—an unwashed mess although bound into half-bun—curled on his gaunt cheeks. Dark eyes flash over the screen and to his feet, irises a soft slate grey and flat. “Sugar,” L mumbles. “Don’t remind me.”

Firmly, Light puts his hand on L’s opposite cheek and pulls the one facing him to his lips. His kiss is quick, catches some of the greasy slick hair, and fuses warmth through him as he pulls away. A wet outline is left behind and L touches it with cautious fingertips like he’s afraid to wipe it away.

“Let’s go to bed.” Light drops his forehead to L’s shoulder. “I know how this episode ends.”

He knows how they all end; they have watched every tape L has down here a hundred times over. _Tomorrow,_ Light thinks, _we should play Scrabble instead._

Bed is through another tunnel and down another set of stairs until a locked door is opened and Light slips out of his cargo pants, L out of his jeans, and both of them crawl into their futon. One bed: L admitted he didn’t expect to survive with anyone else.

“My future has always been a singular one,” L told him: before a bomb destroyed half the Earth and made it uninhabitable; before Tokyo was a wasteland and no-one could breathe the air; and before he relented, finally, when Light begged to go with him. “I don’t like to share.”

At the time, Light touched the metal chain between them, wrapped it around his palm and tugged. Now, he tucks himself against L and puts his ear onto his chest, his blood and L’s heartbeat thudding together.

“Our futures are intertwined now,” he said then. “We’ll share the same grave.”

Now, he says nothing. L kisses the crown of his head and, as they do every night, the room lights shut off on a timer—not to come on until eight hours later. Light dreams about fresh dirt, turned over and over, by his hand and L’s. They dig in tandem in motions that echo the shallow grave Light dug for the badge his father left behind, but he knows this dream doesn’t portent their death. Whatever their hands search for has been buried alive.

**Author's Note:**

> howdy howdy! please let me know if you liked this short fic! thank you!
> 
> [my blog](http://translightyagami.tumblr.com)


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